Communities and Forums
Community of Practice for Large Blended and Online Enrolment Courses
This community of practice is a participant-driven online space dedicated to sharing experiences, strategies, and resources among academic staff and instructors who teach online large enrolment courses. The group was created to provide a space for community members to support one another through post-pandemic teaching and learning in large student cohorts.
Format
In this community of practice, participants will have the opportunity to:
- Share experiences, strategies, and resources
- Select meaningful discussion topics for meetings
- Support fellow community members through post-pandemic teaching and learning
Meeting notes are shared in a Teams channel and a D2L course shell that all members have access to.
Date: The third Wednesday of every month
Time: 12 – 12:45 p.m.
Invitation to join
The Community of Practice for Large Online Enrolment Courses is open to all faculty and instructors who teach online courses with more than 50 students.
If you are interested, please contact Alysia Wright or Lorelei Anselmo for a link to join the next meeting.
Learning Technology Forum
The Learning Technology Forum is a space to share different ways we use learning technology as a part of our teaching and learning in the University of Calgary community and to connect with other members of the community. Learning technology is a broad category, but the focus of the forum is on the tools instructors use to engage learners and evaluate learning.
Format
The Learning Technology Forum is a 45-minute session for discussing learning technology; what works, what doesn’t work, what we’ve learned, and what we want to know.
In the forum, participants will have the opportunity to:
- Share examples of their uses of learning technology
- Discuss broader learning technology applications
- Apply learning technologies to different contexts and disciplines
Date: First Tuesday of every month (excluding January, July, and September)
Time: 10 a.m.
Invitation to join
The Learning Technology Forum is open to everyone in the University of Calgary community who teaches (online or in-person), and works with or has an interest in learning technologies.
If you are interested, please contact Tyson Kendon to be added to the Learning Technology Forum mailing list.
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility (EDIA) in Teaching and Learning Community of Practice
This community of practice is a collaborative and collective learning space to connect, capture, and share our learning, thoughts, and experiences with EDIA in teaching and learning practices. In this participant-driven space, we aim to explore our understanding of the diverse human experience in post-secondary contexts.
Format
In this community of practice, participants will have the opportunity to:
- Share practices, processes, and journeys for engaging in this work in a good way
- Seek clarity and understanding around the issues related to EDIA in post-secondary teaching and learning
- Critically engage in EDIA-related topics of interest to the group and reflect on our lived experiences to cultivate diversity and depth of thought
- Connect and cultivate ongoing interdisciplinary relationships to help build capacity for EDIA in teaching and learning across campus
Date: Monthly meetings will begin again in 2024 and take place throughout the academic year.
Modality: Online via Zoom
Invitation to join
This community of practice is open to educators including course instructors, educational leaders, staff supporting teaching, teaching assistants and postdoctoral scholars in the UCalgary community who have an interest in exploring EDIA practices in their teaching and learning.
If you are interested in joining, please contact Dr. Fouzia Usman, Educational Development Consultant (EDI).
Open Educational Practices Community of Practice
The TI and Libraries & Cultural Resources have collaborated on the development of a new online community of practice (OCoP) for open educational practices at UCalgary. This online community of practice is a space for educators, staff and students to share open educational practices, pedagogies and resources.
Format
In this community of practice, participants will have the opportunity to:
- Share open educational practices, resources and approaches
- Connect with peers and colleagues interested in expanding open educational practices
- Contribute to the development of open-access repositories, blogs, and other channels for sharing open educational practices across and beyond UCalgary
Meeting notes are shared in a Teams channel and a D2L course shell that all participants have access to. As the OCoP grows, the group will develop open-access channels for distributing these notes.
Date: Once per term, next meeting TBD
Invitation to join
This OCoP open to educators, staff, students, and partners who share an interest in open educational practices.
If you are interested in joining this OCoP, please contact Alysia Wright (acwright@ucalgary.ca) or Sarah Adams (sarah.adams1@ucalgary.ca) to be added to the next meeting in Winter 2023.
Teaching with XR Community of Practice
Extended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term referring to virtual, augmented and mixed reality as well as other immersive environments. This community of practice is a space where instructors using extended reality in their teaching can come together to connect, share experiences, good practices and resources, and to help to foster innovative teaching practices across UCalgary.
Any instructor who teaches (or is interested in teaching) with any form of computer-aided tool, from phone-based Augmented Reality to full Virtual Reality setups, is encouraged to join the community, as is any member of the campus community who helps support these types of efforts.
Format
The XR CoP sessions are held online. The Zoom links for each session will be sent to the participants closer to the date of the session. Please see below the session schedule for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Upcoming dates:
- Nov. 14, 2023 from 10 – 11 a.m. | How Teaching with XR Works with speaker Farzana Aktar, a graduate student in computer science.
- Feb. 21, 2024 from 10 – 11 a.m. | How Pedagogy Interacts with XR with speakers Hinako Ishikawa & Akiko Sharp (Japanese Division, SLLLC)
- May 2, 2024 from 10 a.m. | Speakers and topic to be announced.
Invitation to join
If you are interested in joining the Teaching with XR Community of Practice, please contact Tyson Kendon and Anna Pletnyova.
Designing an Online Community of Practice
To design a thoughtful and mutually beneficial online community of practice (OCoP), we developed a seven-stage framework. While it may be useful for readers to approach these stages like sequential steps, the framework is well-suited to an iterative approach that accommodates rapidly changing conditions and needs. At each stage of the framework, we suggest asking the following reflective questions to prompt intentional design of your OCoP.